A while ago, there was a discussion here about enforcing readmore tags in long posts. It was basically shot down under that node as difficult to implement (though a few other reasons were mentioned).

The neat thing about discussions around here is that they can be shot down completely one week, and then brought up by somebody else in the next week and ++'ed to one of the Best Nodes.

I have seen people that maintain the code here comment that it wouldn't be too hard to write something to auto-add readmore's. The harder task is agreeing how it should work.

I ++ you for presenting your idea, even though I don't think I like it. It relies on the end user to know how to do the right thing with both of those text boxes, just like the present system relies on the end user to know how to use readmore's. Better to find a progmatic solution.

I don't think a programatic solution would work well. What I think could work quite well and doesn't seem to be too hard to implement or to be too hard on the server would be to show something like Your post is kinda long. Please consider adding a <readmore> tag! on top of the preview page if the text is longer than X characters. That way you get a warning (or information that something like <readmore> exists), but it's up to you whether and where do you add the tag.

JendaAlways code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code
will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
-- Rick Osborne

Edit by castaway - changed code-tag around the readmore to html-escaped <, >